Water consumption has become an issue in many areas of the world. As such, increasing attention has been paid to how fresh potable water is used. One type of technology that has developed is grey water treatment systems. Grey water treatment systems reuse a portion of the water that would otherwise have gone directly into the waste water collection system. Grey water is generally water that is no longer potable (typically referred to as “white water”) due to usage, but which is not yet so contaminated that it is considered “black water”, which is generally polluted with biological or chemical hazardous materials. Grey water typically is generated by the bath/shower, bathroom sinks, and washing machines. Although they may produce grey water at times, generally kitchen sinks and dishwashers are considered to generate black water, due to the high level of food particulates and the possibility of contamination. In addition, it should be appreciated that certain activities may result in the generation of black water in an area that otherwise may typically generate grey water, such as the washing of dirty diapers in a washing machine.
Systems have been provided to collect and distribute grey water in a residential environment. However, current residential grey water systems often ineffectively use the grey water resulting in a lower savings in potable water than ideal. Prior inventions have adopted varying complexity of harvesting residential wastewater (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,112,497, 4,162,218, 5,084,920, 5,201,082, 5,251,446, 5,243,719, 5,303,728, 5,319,766, 5,341,529, 5,406,657, 5,498,330, 5,937,455, 6,276,005, 6,328,882, 7,121,292, and current U.S. application 20060144769) and reusing that water for other uses such as flushing toilets. In all prior art, the inventors have been preoccupied with maximizing the harvesting aspects of the water from all practical available sources. This has caused the various inventions to be overly complex and complicated to deploy and maintain. More complicated systems with multiple storage reservoirs to anticipate all possible volumes of storage have the problems of more complexity. Prior art overly complicates the collection system aspects of a small grey water reuse system. Prior art also treats each drop of the grey water as if it needs to be harvested and used totally thus overcomplicating the system. Prior art does not make use of any electronic control points in order to allow monitoring and safeguarding of the system.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,276,005 issued to Sanders describes one such concept but with some shortcomings. The determination of grey water addition to the gravity fixture is accomplished by some simple water level logic switches and mechanical levers pivoting within the gravity tank. The microswitch is also very sensitive to small adjustments and can be overly difficult to adjust for the maximum flow of grey water into the gravity tank. The microswitch within the gravity tank can become problematic because of the high humidity environment it operates within. With high chlorinated water (chlorinated by design of the invention) the switch will become corroded and inoperable. The mechanical translation of pivoting levers in the tank can become stuck because of biological growth on them from the water they are floating in.
There is a need for a grey water system that is compact, easy to install, allows for monitoring logic with simple signals, and is low maintenance.